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gloomskulls · 1 month ago

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⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ YELP REVIEWS [tasm!peter parker x reader]

pairings: tasm!peter parker x reader

⇢ ˗ˏˋ SUMMARY ୨୧ a fan decided to make an unofficial yelp page for spider man as a joke. A lot of clients...or citizens had so much to say.

⇢ ˗ˏˋ WARNING ୨୧ none

A/n: Just a random short fluff. I'll go back doing dark stories once I feel like it. I haven't really used Yelp, but my friend gave me this idea lol, so credit to Angelina lol. Don't steal this coz I'll shave your head.

Peter slumped on the couch scrolling through his phone. He frowned intensely and tapped a link you had just sent him, headlined as "Spider-Man Yelp Reviews"

You leaned against the door with a stifled grin. "Found it while looking at reviews for that new pizza place. Thought you'd get a kick out of the comments from your…clients."

Peter groaned. "Clients? I'm not running a business. What is this?"

Thumbing through the reviews, he cycled through disbelief, frustration then finally wounded pride.

2 stars

"He saved me from a mugger, but he sailed so quickly I didn't even manage to get the chance to say than you. Really rude."

3 stars

"I appreciate the help...however, he left me dangling from a lamppost for 20 minutes until the cops arrived. You could have just dropped me on the ground bro."

4 stars

"Brilliant rescue, but my phone screen got cracked when he yanked me into a speeding car. Thanks, I guess"

Peter threw his head back, exasperated. "Cracked phone screens? I'm sorry, Janet, would you prefer to have been hit by the car?"

"Peter, this is gold," you dropped beside him taking the phone to scroll further. "Ooh, look at this one!"

1 star

“I yelled for Spider-Man to come help me when my cat was stuck in a fire escape. He didn’t show. What’s the worth of a superhero when they won’t even help the little guy from time to time?”

"That wasn't even a crime," Peter exclaimed with hands thrown up. "What do people expect me to do run a cat rescue hotline?"

"I mean…isn't helping people your whole thing? Even the little guys? Or, in this case, little cats?"

He narrowed his eyes at you. "You're enjoying this way too much."

"Oh, I'm loving it." You scrolled to another review.

3 stars

"Got my purse back after it was snatched, but when he handed it to me, he just said, 'Here ya go,' and left. No photo, no autograph. Kinda rude."

"Oh no, Peter, how dare you not stay for selfies mid-crime fighting?" You snickered.

Peter dragged a hand down his face. "Am I supposed to throw a meet and greet after every mugging? Should I bring merch? Web-slingers for kids? Spider-Man action figures?"

You wiggled your eyebrows. "Don't tempt me to start a side hustle."

He shook his head, scrolling further. His eyes widening in disbelief at the review.

1 star

"I yelled for Spider-Man to help me with my groceries. He didn't show up. Ended up dragging six bags up five flights of stairs by myself. What's even the point of having a superhero if he doesn't help the little people?"

Peter let out a strangled laugh. "Groceries? I have to save people from groceries now?"

"Be honest," you teased. "If you would have heard her, would you help?"

He hesitated. "…I mean, maybe. If I wasn't busy."

"Softie," you said, poking his cheek. "You're gonna carry someone's Costco haul one day; I just know it."

Peter groaned louder and clicked on another review, muttering, "It can't get worse. It can't possibly—"

0 stars

"Spider-Man swung by my building and broke my balcony railing. Now my landlord's charging me for repairs. Thanks, webhead."

"Oh," you managed a stifled laugh. "Isn't that the guy from your last patrol? You know, the one who yelled at you when you were chasing that car thief?"

Peter buried his face into his hands. "It's not my fault that balconies are so flimsy in the city. It's very hard to swing around without hitting something."

You patted his shoulder soothingly. "Don't worry, hero. I'm sure you'll get your Yelp rating up again. Maybe even start a loyalty program? Save five, get a free coffee?"

Peter shot you a look, betraying irritation and amusement. "You're impossible." You just grinned menacingly at his words.

"Hey, look at this one," you said, stealing the phone and scrolling to a five-star review, finally. "Finally, some love."

5 stars

“Spider-Man saved my dog from traffic. My girlfriend thinks he's cute. I do too, honestly. Would let him rescue me any day.”

He blinked. "What…what does that even mean?!"

"It means you’re the city’s hottest, most eligible bachelor,” you said, draping an arm over his shoulders. "Even dogs are falling for you. Can't blame them."

He rubbed his temples. “I think I need to retire. Or move to a quieter city. Do they need Spider-Man in, like, Ohio? Whadoyo think baby?”

You smiled and opened the Yelp app. “There, there, hero. I’ll fix your reputation." You assured him as you patted his back

Peter leaned over, squinting as you typed. “What are you— '5 stars. Spider-Man is amazing. Handsome. Athletic. Definitely has a great butt' Babe!" He read out everything you typed for him as you clicked the submit button

You winked. "Just telling the truth. Besides, if you're going to be stuck here, you might as well be a five-star hero."

"Unbelievable," he muttered, but the corner of his mouth twitched up in a smile.

@gloomskulls 2024, DON'T COPY, TRANSLATE OR USE OF MY WORKS IN ANY OTHER WEBSITE. Photos don't belong to me

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pedge-page · 1 year ago

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Plushies 4 - Teddy

Joel Miller x F!Reader - Yet ANOTHER plushie fic, follows Cluster

Plushies Series Masterlist

Can be read as standalone

Summary: Joel buys you two toys: a giant teddy bear from Costco. And a strap-on dildo.

Warnings: omg where to begin- stuffed animal masturbation, stuffed animal fucking, humping, 69-ing a stuffed bear, sucking dildo, dildo riding, anal play, anal sex, double penetration, pet names, daddy kink, slight cuck!Joel behavior, pussy slapping, finger fucking, vaginal fluids, language, Joel's plush obsession gone too far

18+ ONLY

- - - -

He's shopping in Costco when he sees the absolute behemoth of a Teddy Bear. Standing 7 feet tall, 75 pound of cotton belly, AND $100 off? Joel stares up at the thing and instantly knows he needs to get it for his girl. He doesn't care how ridiculous he looks lugging it into the shopping cart, women in the store eying him curiously as he checks out, and the jealous stares of children in the parking lot as hauls it in bed of the truck and speeds off home.

It just needs one more accessory and then it will be perfect.

Joel swipes his arm over the neatly made bed of squishmellows, not thinking twice as they clutter to the ground. He fetches big Teddy over his shoulder and slams its soft booty on the bed. The thing practically takes up the entire surface.

He hears you putting your purse and keys down on the counter in the kitchen. Quickly, he fashions his accessory to the bear before stepping away right as you open the door and are surprised to see him.

And a big fucking teddy bear on your bed.

"Joel! Oh my god!" You squeal giddily.

"You like it? This is Teddy's big brother. Like me"

"So the teddy you bought me for Valentine's day and I've buried in my pussy is...Tommy?"

Joel's hand twitches by his side as he stares at the bear. "Ok, This is Papi Teddy instead."

You kiss him on the cheek before jumping on the bed, legs spread like a starfish to latch yourself to the side. Joel laughs at how small you are compared to the monster. You wrap yourself around its side and smush your face into its dark soft curls, running your hands all over its body thinking about how Joel's hair is just as fluffy.

You go to sit in its lap to make Joel take a pic when you pause, noticing the hard thing between its chubby thighs.

"Joel. Why does this teddy have a strap on dildo?"

"Because he's a mature Teddy, baby."

Why can't I just have a normal fucking boyfriend who punches my stuffed animals' faces, you think to yourself.

"You spent $500 on a giant bear just so I could fuck it?"

"No. Of course not!" He exclaimed, hands on his hips. "It was on sale for $399."

"How much was the strap on?"

"... ok that was $79 with $20 shipping. Anyway, since you wanna fuck it so bad, go ahead. I didnt say shit. How did I end up with such a horny little girl?"

Sometimes you just wanted to slap him in his smug face.

Being such a hornly little girl (with your equally perverted boyfriend) is exactly how you found yourself in your current position, wearing cute lacy lingerie and bent over the enormous leg of the teddy bear, hand wrapped around it's silicon pink cock as you took it in and out of your mouth.

"Look so good swallowing Teddy's cock." Joel says. He sat in the chair opposite of the bed and watched you, leaning forward to get every detail of the way you slobbered all over it. "Like it when ya make a mess like that."

You hummed contently, bobbing your head to suck on the tip, giving Joel the show he wanted. It was like being front seat to his own private porno. He's been resisting touching himself, his bulge pressing painfully against the zipper of his jeans.

You pussy throbbs with need at the scene, the pink jeweled plug Joel had placed in your rear twitching each time you felt the tip of the cock gag your throat.

"Straddle his face baby. Let Teddy get a taste of that pussy." You do as he says, pulling your lips off of him to position yourself reverse cowgirl on the enormous plush. Your thigh swings over his massive head, pressing your hips down.

"Oooooohhhhhhh, fuck Joel," you moan when his giant snout makes contact with your clit, mounting it like a horse.

"Not me, princess. Tell 'im."

"Ahhhh, OH , oh God teddy. Love riding your f-face."

Joel humms in content, watching you arch your back with each grind against the plush. "Get back to swallowin that cock with those pretty lips. Show him what a real fuckin nasty girl you are."

You push your hair back with one hand and grab the base of dildo with the other, wrapping your lips around the tip before inching it deeper. Your hips continued to hump the bears face, his massive nose parting your thong, through your folds. A guilty wetness smears against the fluff, its curls darkening to Joel's likeness from your juices.

"Yeahhh, oh baby, you should see yourself right now. Gagging on a big fuckin bear cock. My slutty little whore. Takin it so deep—yeah thats it— all the way. Put 'im in your throat."

You gagg around the plastic, holding your head there as your eyes squeeze shut. You knew Joel loved the feeling, so letting him watch it from another perspective would drive him crazy. You pull away and sucked a breath of air before going to jerk the cock with the copious amounts of saliva you had coated on it. Drool hangs out of your mouth, dripping to your tits and onto the plush but you didn't care. Not when the satisfying grind against Teddy's face brought you closer and closer.

"Wanna cum on Teddy's face, Daddy," you moan, putting the tip back in your mouth and hollowing your cheeks as your hips moved faster.

"Bet Teddy would love it. Do it, rub your slutty cunt all over his face."

Your pace slows with a long whine, eyes closing as your moan around the cock while cumming.

"Fuck, that's so fucking hot, baby. You're a goddamn dream, ya know that?" He groans, leaning back and pressing his palm to his crotch to finally put some pressure on his tented dick.

Your orgasm had barely finished before you were picking up speed again, humping your Teddy's face with your fresh arousal. Your hole twitched against the anal plug. "Daddy, need you to take care of me."

"Ah uh. Teddy might not be able to cum in you like I can but his cock still needs some lovin' from that tight pussy of yours." Joel stands and walks close to the bed, no shame in rubbing his cock through his pants. You whine at the sight, rubbing your pussy faster.

"You makin' a mess over here yet?"

You proudly lay back from Teddy's face and spread your legs, showcasing the large wet area on the stuffed animals face and the equally dripping arousal between your legs, swirling your clit with your fingertip and moaning loudly.

Joel ran his thigh hands through the matted wet fur of the bears face. "Fuck yeah, good girl, good fucking girl." His other hand finds your puffy pussy, smacking your finger away as he drove two thick digits into your wet heat. He finger fucks you aggressively, marveling at your juices splashing against your thigh and down Teddy's forehead. "God damn, got me my own little pornstar."

You throw your head back, clawing to keep your own legs parted as he works your oversensitive spot over. He presses downward, feeling the bulge of the plug through your vaginal walls. Your juices leak down to the jewel, generously coating your puckered hole.

He quickly withdraws his finger, tugging at his button and zipper with a renewed sense of pace. "Get on that dildo and ride your new teddy bear."

Joel moves away to stand close to the bed as you flipp your leg around to straddle the plush's belly. You inch your hips lower, wiggling them slightly to entice Joel. He platfully slaps your ass, making you giggle. Your hand wrapping around the width of the cock to line up at your entrance.

A high pitched moan escapes your lips as you sunk down on the toy all the way to the base in one motion. Your lips find Teddy's nose as you adjust to the girth inside you, kissing it and tasting the remnets of your slick.

"Fuck me, princess," Joel coos, running his hand over the length of your back soothingly. You look stunning like this, the most gorgeous thing he'd ever seen. Is this what you always look like while riding his dick?

Gently yet sternly, you feel the pressure of his palm against your back, gliding along each ridge of your spin, urging you to move up and down on the dildo. You set off a slow pace, hands fisting the fluffy chest of your new Teddy friend, slick walls clamping down on both toys buried deep inside you. The plug in your ass occasionally nudged the tip of the dildo, making you whine. You felt very full, but not entirely too much. It was just perfect.

"How's Teddy's cock feel in your tight little snatch?" Joel guides your movements into a faster pace, now bouncing on the cock, tits jiggling with each thrust.

"Fuck, Teddy, feels so good inside me, fills me up so full." You glance at Joel who's licking his lips down at you. "Not as full as my Daddy's cock makes me feel," you add, smiling and biting your lip.

His lips clash against yours at the confession. Suddenly you feel your bralette being ripped off your chest. "Joel—" Your protest muffled by his incessant mouth, biting at your lips and sucking your tongue. You couldn't help but grind faster on the bear while Joel's fingers tweak your bare nipples and cup your swaying tits.

His other hand trails down your spine, swatting your ass. He tugs the thin fabric of the thong over your crack, pressing the anal plug further imside you. You keen into his mouth, tongue swiping his. His fingers honing on your hole, tapping it to remind you of its presence. He slinks further down to where you and Teddy's cock are joined together, your slick pouring down and staining the fluff below.

He feels your wetness at where your folds part to accommodate the pink length inside you. Hand now slick with your arousal, he inches back up to the plug, pressing it further inside you.

You gasp, breaking your heated kiss. "D-daddy, oh fuck... please," you cried, leaning forward, desperate to escape his pressure.

"You want me here?"

You nod, drunk on the need to cum again.

"Cum on Teddy's dick first."

You nod hazily again, arms propping you further up to recapture Joel's lips as he used the plug, tugging and pushing it inside your ass. Your hips move faster, now bouncing on your knees to get the tip of the cock to tap your g-spot inside. Joel loves how good you are at riding, always seeking your pleasure, knowing the exact angles to get yourself to cum.

Joel's fingers wrap around the exterior of the plug and pulls the base expanding around your hole and pulling it out. You cried out in ecstacy. "TEDDY oh—fu-fuuuccckk, s'good oh shit! M'cummin'—cumming on Teddy's cock! Yesyesyes, ughhh—teddyteddyteddyteddy—" you chant, cumming hard on the dildo, arms giving way as you crashed down on Teddy's chest, pussy grinding down against the plush surroundings as you floated in your orgasm.

Joel wastes no time, mounting you from behind, one knee pressing into the mattress with his foot planted directly next to the plush bear foot. You yelp as Joel pushes your body fully flush against the bear, the dildo sinking deeper into your cunt. "Hold on to Teddy, baby."

Your arms wrap around Teddy's middle. You felt a gob of slimy liquid fall directly on your puckered hole, gaping as it swallowes down Joel's spit. His hand spread your ass to watch it twitch, rubbing the tip of his cock to smear it all over, dipping inside ever so slightly before retreating, prepping you.

"Obedient little bitch in heat, just begging to get stuffed full of cock tonight. Gonna take both our dicks at the same time?"

You whine in the bears fluffy chest, wiggling your hips in the air to entice Joel's movements into action.

He lines the tip of his cock against your pulsing little hole before pushing in just the tip, your muffled moans being swallowed by the plush below you.

"So fuckin' tight, babygirl. Holy shit. Never gonna get used to this perfect little ass," He groans, eyes fluttering at the squeeze of your walls struggling to accommodate his length. While the dildo buries in your pussy was generously sized, it was nothing compared to Joel's girth and length, practically splitting you in half.

Teeth clenching into the fluff fabric, you swallow down a cry as Joel's hips inched further, invading your guts.

Joel let out a pained breath as he bottoms out inside your ass. "Fuck, princess. How you feelin'?"

"S-so-so f-mm-fuullll."

He leaned over your body, pressing his cock further into you, his belly slotting perfectly along your arched back. He brushes your hair away from your face to kiss your cheek.

God, you loved this man so fucking much.

He sits back up, aggressive hands seaking your waist as set a brutal pace, hips rutting into the fat of your cheeks.

Nevermind, fuckJoelfuckJoelfuckJoelfuckJoel—

You were trapped between the giant head of the bear and Joel's incessant pounding. Each drive of his hips push you down further into Teddy's softness, the dildo inside you plunging deeper, rubbing against the inside of your belly. Your eyes rolled to the back of your head, tongue out panting like a dog, arms wrapped so tightly around the plush as you held on for dear life.

"So fuckin' good, oh my Fuck, you're an angel. Just a doll, takin' my cock like this. Getting fucked by your Daddy and your Teddy too—FUCK—sweetest little cunt and ass, my perfect little cock slut, so amazing, 'm so lucky, love ruinin' this ass—holy s-shit!"

The combined fullness of the dildo and Joel's cock inside you rubbed all the deepest, desperate parts inside you, filling you to the brim over and over again. Both cocks rubbing against your walls, their tips nudging, lengths pressing against each other through the membrane. You could feel a drop of Joel's sweat trickle down your back, his harsh almost pained breaths filling the room along side the obscene slapping of his hips against yours.

"You like this? Like getting pounded like the little whore you are?"

"Yes,yesyes holy fuck Daddy yes! Love getting railed by your big cock in my ass, Teddy deep in my pussy—oh fuck Joel 'm cumming!"

You clenched around both Joel's and Teddy's length as you came, screaming into air, uncontrollable shaking as you hump and grind your clit into the soft plush under you, tits pressing against its fullness.

Joel's fingernails dig painfully into the sides of your hips, stuttering his pace as the feeling of you clamping down on him. Brows furrowed, he let out a pained and long growl as he stills completely, cock pulsing, dumping a massive load of his seed deep inside you.

He slips his softening cock out of you carefully before collapsing on top of your sweaty back, sandwiching you between him and the bear.

"I love you," he whispers right into your ear, only for you.

Afterwards, Joel cleaned you up with a warm towel, leaving you sprawled arms and legs draped over the bear in the same position he fucked you in, exhaustion preventing you from doing anything other than wince when Joel slipped the silicon cock out of you. He showered you in praise and sweet kisses all over your body, cradling you to lie on your back as he removed the soaked Teddy bear from the bed. He climbed into the sheet with you, after having tossed a few more plushies around your body to surround you in extra softness.

You slept for a few hours. When you awoke, your eyes adjusted the blurriness to see Joel luing next to you on his back, a squishy sitting on his chest as he playfully tilted it to brush again his nose, staring at it with a straight face.

"That one's cute. You wanna take him home?" You asked curiously.

"Well, I mean Kitty is there all by herself on my big bed, could use a friend..." he mumbled, not totally aware that you were watching him eye your stuffed animals on the bed. "Or that's the shit you'd say, right?" He added quickly.

You playfully pout with him, trying to hold a giggle. "He does need a friend..." You said, hoping to encourage this newfound softness of the man you love.

Joel nodded briefly before pausing his fiddling. "Kitty's a he?"

- -

Extended scene:

"Nah uh, I read all cats are girlies on the little machine at The Olive Garden."

"The what?"

"The little tablet thing at Chili's? Says all cats are ladies."

"You mean the true or false quiz that says: Calico cats are almost all female?"

"Yeah 'ats that one."

"That's ONE breed of Kitty Joel."

"I'd like to breed your kitty."

"I can't take you anywhere."

- - - -

Next: Piggy

Or more Teddy special

#pedro pascal smut #joel miller smut #joel miller fan fiction #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #last of us fanfiction #last of us smut #joel miller fanfiction

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hms-no-fun · 3 months ago

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Oh yeah the big pickups to work in an office job infuriate me to no end. A whole parking lot full of death machines that have never known the touch of a gravel road or hauled anything larger than a big Costco run. I have a nice lil electric hatchback tho.

the thing is, i always wanted a car. my parents took me on a lot of road trips when i was growing up (i remember a couple years before he died, my dad told me he was very proud to have shown me so much of the country when he himself had grown up poor and could only travel as far as the next job took him), so of course i have in me that quintessential American longing for The Road. in high school, i fantasized about getting into a car and disappearing into traffic, traveling to some distant corner where nobody lived and finding a situation to occupy. god help me, as a teen i bemoaned being born too late and longed for the naive vision of the 60s i'd received from my parents and pop culture and the rusted-over kitsch that dotted the remains of Route 66 (which my dad loved to talk about).

i hate car culture in part because i used to love car culture. it's a microcosm of indoctrinated American patriotism in general. they sell you on the dream, right? the freedom of travel, of expression. i wanted to be the millennial Jack Kerouac, whose work i did not actually read because i was young and dumb and drowning in dysphoria. but as i got older i saw how quickly little bumps and scratches can turn into massive financial burdens, to say nothing of cracked windshields or flat tires. then my mom died and i was given the responsibility of handling her car, a silver scion xb. i was 19, i did not have a license and had next to zero experience driving, nor had i ever had a job before. when i say "given the responsibility to handle her car" instead of "given her car," i mean that i didn't just get her car. like, i had it, i had the keys and no one was around to tell me not to drive it. but in order to get the title signed over to me, i had to go through an insane bureaucratic process of proving that my mom was dead, and that i was her kid, and that i should have the title to the car. this took months of back and forth miscommunication as dated notices were sent and bills piled up. because it wasn't just the car i got, but the debt as well. some $30,000 of it left unpaid by mom, which i was now expected to pay in her stead. my first job was working night shifts at a wal mart stocking the frozen food department, and that was the job where i rode my bike on the highway to get to work. i didn't drive because i didn't have a license, didn't have experience, was terrified of highway drivers, and knew very distinctly that if anything went wrong i'd instantly be in so much more debt (monetary and bureaucratic) than i already was. eventually my sister, a career nurse with three kids and a house, took over the car from me.

nobody understood why i didn't drive that car more. even my mom, when she was still alive, she said "when i was your age, i was dying to get out of the house." i was too! but for all that cars culturally represented freedom, in practice what they came to represent to me was the expected cost of participating in society. i was already sensitive to adults sneering at me for my perceived immaturity (the joys of being a millennial), which only compounded on learning that i didn't have a car or license, that i wasn't proactively joining Clubs or Organizations, that i wanted to pursue the arts of all things, that i wasn't Christian, etc etc etc. i never got out to see live music because i didn't have a car and didn't have money. i didn't get my first smart phone until late 2015. i spent a lot of my college years feeling alienated because i was at least two years older than everyone else (i already didn't want to go to college straight out of high school even before my mom died), still used a flip phone, and didn't have a car. which is to say i was a working class person trying to get by in a middle class institution. and i only got in because i was very good at peddling my sob story for sympathy points. FAFSA loves to finance the odd tragedy, i'm telling you (don't worry, i still had to take on a ton of student loan debt). when i expressed to family that i didn't want a car because i didn't feel safe as a driver, and felt that i shouldn't need to have a car in order to participate in society, they said "everyone feels that way at first, but you just have to get over it. or move to a big city. good luck affording that!" as a related aside, when i told those same people that i liked being in college for the pursuit of knowledge and wanted to graduate towards being a sort of generalist, they flatly insisted that that's not how college works anymore, and that i should instead put my energies towards a Useful Degree that would Get Me A Good Job.

of course they were sympathetic, at least on the surface. they told me these things in a kind tone, the way adults always do when what they're saying boils down to "it's not fair, but life ain't fair." and i've just never been able to accept that. before i knew anything about socialism or communism or materialist dialectics, when i was still very much under the thrall of post-Clinton liberalism, i still felt this deep-rooted conviction that when people said "life isn't fair," they were giving up something. that it was an excuse, an appeal to a higher power, a resignation to the status quo. my experience with cars, by the time i hit 25, was that you bought them for the freedom they promised, and then spent of your life driving that car between one of maybe five locations on the regular and doing very little else. the only time i ever felt free in a car was on a road trip, which happened with vanishing irregularity as all the associated costs skyrocketed in the 2000s. all the other time was spent driving in circles looking for parking, only to balk at how expensive it was. spent stuck in traffic for hours, amid concrete dunes of overpasses tangled with one another like a four-year-old's first try at tying their own shoes. spent angrily judging the poor driving conduct of other people, spent resenting anyone and everyone who inconvenienced their drive, spent rubbernecking at horrific accidents on the side of the road, spent worrying about car payments and insurance payments and how much it's gonna cost to get a tune-up, and then someone breaks in and steals all your stuff and your insurance doesn't want to pay for it, and then you get into an accident and you spend months haggling with your insurance and their insurance in the hopes that someone will maybe pay for the debt you've had to take on in getting your car repaired, because of course professional life doesn't take a break just because your mode of transportation got totaled.

and if i was applying for a job and the employer found out i didn't have a car, i was denied on the spot. i learned very quickly to lie about such things as often as possible. but i also learned that i could only bluff for so long before the lack of a car became a genuinely insurmountable hurdle. which fucked me up tremendously because at no point in my adult life, to this day, can i ever imagine being able to afford all the associated costs of having a car. in many respects, not having a car was the only reason i was able to survive the way i did. it meant i could work part-time while i was in school (with student loans making up the shortfall), share an apartment with two or three or four other people, and just barely have enough to eat the bare minimum and go see a movie sometimes. of course i wanted the freedom all my car-owning friends had, but mostly i wanted it so i could drive out into the middle of nowhere at night and be truly alone. i wanted a car so that i could escape from the frictional sandpaper bureaucracy of american existence... and i knew from experience by then that that's simply not how the world works.

it took me until 2020 to finally move to seattle, one of those mythical Big Cities with Actually Existing Public Transit. and holy shit, it's a revelation! i have better access the place where i live now than i ever have, and it's a freedom that costs SO MUCH LESS than the same would've cost me back home. but i've also lived here long enough now to see all the ways in which our transit system here is deeply flawed and run by the wrong people. i see many of the same forces at play here as i did back home. i see now how car owners and allies to the car dealership fiefdoms of the nation utilize car ownership and road maintenance as a tremendous lever of power. they've deliberately trapped us in this cycle of poverty and personal transportation reliance, and used the money they got from us buying their cars to then buy politicians so that they defund public transit and oppose any urbanist reforms. did you know that much of america used to be covered by street cars and rail lines? if you live in the midwest or on the west coast, your town very likely only exists the way it does because of mass public transit. they were necessary for bringing people into these remote places to create new markets for wealth extraction. once the population in those places was stable, and mass-produced personal vehicles became the norm, the capitalists of those areas deliberately allowed the transit networks to "go bankrupt" (ie they pretended transit is a business and not a utility that pretty much by definition can't turn a profit in a traditional manner) so they could be bought up and liquidated by future car dealers. this is what i think of when i remember my family telling me "that's just not the way the world works."

why? it used to be the way the world worked. why can't it be again? if the current status quo is the result of choices that created economic pressures which shaped the nature of society, why can't we do the same thing again but different? the way things are now is sick. it's unhealthy. the vast majority of microplastics come from car rubber, and what socioeconomic classes do you think are mostly likely to live close to high-traffic roads? it's not rich people, i'll tell you that. it's not the car dealers or the small city councils worried that a bus connection might bring the poors in. when i say "car owners need to be oppressed" i'm talking about these people. suburban supremacist dictators and their sycophantic liege lords whose biggest priorities in life are to keep gas prices low and to maintain their god-given right to never having to see a poor person. i hate these people because i've been sneered at by them my whole life, while they have been personally responsible for many of the same socioeconomic conditions which resulted in the deaths of both my parents, along with many other members of my extended family. i've long since stopped believing in the idea of "death by natural causes." only the rich live long enough to die old. the rest of us die by a thousand cuts borne of neglect. our healthcare is gatekept, our education is gatekept, our transportation is gatekept. freedom is a thing to be bought, and when you don't have money, the next best thing is your blood. you give it up for a piece of something and you convince yourself that it's enough for you. but it is only a piece, and its apportionment is the result of greed and avarice happening in broad daylight all around us. i fully believe that a genuine war will need to be waged against the car barons before this horrendous now can be toppled, and it will be a war because they are aligned with the cops and with capital. this, too, is a microcosm, and in it we see the nature of our struggle for socialism unburdened by neoliberal word salad.

people have made the world this way. and people will make it something else.

#sarahposts #car culture #public transit #capitalism #late stage capitalism #classism #sorry this one got a little personal #you know me

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